Lindy Hoppin' Linus

Thoughts on (and lessons learned from?) Wicked

2008-06-25T20:25:00.004-05:00

...To those who'd ground me
Take a message back from me:
Tell them how I
Am defying gravity!
I'm flying high
Defying gravity!

A couple of weekends ago, I went to see Wicked on Broadway in NYC. Brought my mom and grandma to see it, and the City, since they get out to the East Coast so seldom, living in Minnesota and all... I was pretty awesome, I must say. Though, I was a little disappointed by the second half of the show. There were certainly good numbers in the second half, but on the whole, the second half was a little anti-climactic after the first half. There was simply nothing in the second half to give a resolution that lived up to the climax at the end of the first half. Maybe I've just been spoiled with other shows on Broadway: Phantom, Les Mis, Rent, Joseph... I dunno, and I hate saying there was something about this show that I didn't like - because over all I felt it was really powerful, and did the story quite well. I just didn't fully feel the second half like I expected to...

That said, Wicked has an amazing soundtrack! I can't get the songs out of my head. And it's kind of amazing to me at how relatable the lyrics can be to life - given the fantastical fictitious world this musical depicts...

I've heard it said
That people come into our lives for a reason
Bringing something we must learn
and we are led
To those who help us most to grow
If we let them
And we help them in return...
...I know I'm who I am today
Because I knew you...

...because I knew you
I have been changed for good.

Makes me think of the friends I've made over the years. Or the friends I knew in college that I just got to see again at my 5-year college reunion last weekend! :) Amazing how much people have an effect on you, huh? Or even how much the absense of people can affect you.

Or...

Something has changed within me
Something is not the same
I'm through with playing by the rules
Of someone else's game
Too late for second-guessing
Too late to go back to sleep
It's time to trust my instincts
Close my eyes, and leap...

Kinda describes the feeling of changing to adulthood, huh? How many times have I felt I'm taking a leap of faith into my future over the past 4 years since I moved to Boston? There was never a manual of how to do this thing I call life... I've just been driving by the seat of my pants and trying to figure out where I want life to go. But, this song gives you a fantastic mantra to recite with that leap of faith in the next lines of the song (after the ones above):

It's time to try
Defying gravity
I think I'll try
Defying gravity
And you can't pull me down...

But, my all-time favorite right now directly relates to my life in many ways:

Dancing through life
Swaying and sweeping
And always keeping cool...

...Nothing matters
But knowing nothing matters
It's just life...
So keep dancing through...

And that's where I'll leave this rather crazily constructed free-flow-thought post. Keep dancing through life. In my humble opinion, it's the best way to find happiness wherever you go! :)

Free-flowing bubbles of ...what?

2008-06-09T23:59:00.003-05:00

How is it that people affect us so much? And by "people" I mean individuals, groups, crowds of strangers, that random person that bumped into you at the grocery store yesterday... think about it. People are an intricate part of our lives - and as much as we'd like to be above the effects they have on us, in the end we're always wrong. We let people affect us simply by not wanting them to affect us. We let them affect the way we view the world, the color of shirt we wear or don't wear, the song we skip on the radio.

I just watched Fried Green Tomatoes for the first time in my life - and it's one of those movies that I think, after I've watched it, "how did I never see this movie until now?" Ha ha ha. Guess it's just one of those things...

It's one of those movies (if you've never seen it yourself) that hits everyone differently. Different people catch different messages from it - and I imagine that if I watch it again 6 months or a year from now, the movie will affect me in an entirely different way. But this time around, what really struck me was how many different ways people can affect us. It made me ponder a bit - how much the different people in my life affect me.

Friends: who are there whenever I need them - just a phone call away. They calm me, keep me sane, help me remember my own ridiculousness, boost me up when I feel low. That sort of thing.

Family: who all too often get neglected because "they'll always be there" - but whose opinion matters more than anyone else on earth.

Dancers: different people in the dance scene affect the way I feel about my own dancing abilities in very different ways. The way someone looks at me when I dance - are they judging me? Good or bad? Or the way a particular dancer moves - I want to emulate or stay away from said movement patterns.

New acquaintances: always make me wonder how I appear to others who don't know me well. What's their first impression of me? Good, bad, ugly? And does it change over time, or remain relatively the same?

Female friends: make me remember why I love being a woman. Help me get more in touch with the feminine side of life, especially when I forget to remember that I'm quite the looker myself. Laugh at me and my crazy boy stories. Tell me their crazy boy stories and make me wonder how they came to be a part of those stories.

Guy friends: always make me feel at home - like big/little brothers. I can sit back in the couch, not even have to talk, and get back in touch with those tom-boy roots of mine.

Good friends - guy or girl: allow me to just be. No worries of judgement or embarrassment or threat. I can be me, dressed down, goofy, nerdy ol' me.

Men: aw men... boys... guys... whatever you want to call them (in the intricate leveled system of labeling based on the very subjective process of judging age vs. maturity level to determine whether they get assigned "boy" "guy" or "man" and also tied into how well you know him: 'boy' is casual acquaintance/hook-up turned into "not sure if we're friends or more but we talk a lot"; 'guy' is a dude you like but haven't necessarily done anything with except perhaps a few dates; 'man' is a dude you're dating, but only if you're older than college-age... and those are just my rough definitions...) - why do they have such a lasting effect sometimes? Old boyfriends, who pop up in my thoughts every so often and send an embarrassed glow to my cheeks as I remember something I'd said or did and was embarrassed that he suddenly knew about it. First dates gone awry - why did they go awry? Did he not like me? Or was it the other way around? Random others - hookups, run-ins, crushes both mutual and one-sided... all seem to eventually boil down to: "hmm, what next? Anything? Nothing? What are the rules here? Do any rules exist? What's he thinking? Do I want to know?"

Haha - funny how thoughts bubble out of my mind sometimes before I even fully recognize they're there. I start typing, and POW! there are suddenly endless words trying to vie for space to adequately, though never quite thoroughly, express what exactly it is that's on my mind. Heh. Amazing how brains work, really. That one can be thinking about something so intently, without really knowing that one is thinking of it at all. And while that something is brewing in one part of the brain, 10 other things decide to run through one's head as well - all vying for position, getting conscious-thought time when they can grab it. It astounds me. Because, in addition to all of that musical chairs that's happening in my mind, it still runs my entire body - reminds me to breathe, to see and interpret and adjust. To sense, touch, taste, smell, hear. To acknowledge the air around me, the number of people in a room, gauge the feeling of said people (which gets me back to how much people - whoever they are - affect us). It also governs the way I will feel. And who knows how that happens??? Is it because of the thoughts - positive or negative - that run through my head? Or is it something else? Can I actually control my emotions simply by changing thought habits? Or is it more complicated than that? Or is it completely random? [Hmm, like this post has become...]

Ha, funny. I don't think I'll ever fully make sense of how it all fits together, no matter how hard I try....

I tried so hard,
And got so far,
And in the end, it doesn't even matter...

...doesn't stop this brain from continuing the attempts to make sense of it all, though. :)

[Happy reading? Don't worry if you don't follow - this is free-form writing if I've ever seen it... I have my doubts about whether I'll be able to go back in a week and read through it and make any sense of it myself.]

When old adages go wrong...

2008-05-15T22:26:00.003-05:00

Sure, two heads are better than one, if you’re collaborating on a project with another person. But what if you grew another head? I’m not sure that it rings true in that case…

An apple a day will certainly NOT keep the doctor away if all you eat each day is one apple.

A watched pot never boils slower than an unwatched pot. Time can be relative in some instances, but this is not one of them…

You know, the grass is greener on the other side of the fence because the neighbor just spray-painted his yard bright green for St. Patrick’s Day…

Sticks and stones may break your bones but words will ALWAYS hurt you if they’re made out of hard plastic and hurled at you…

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but Styx and (the) Stones will ALWAYS make me rock out in my living room.

A rolling stone gathers no moss. Hmm. The same could be said for the Rolling Stones, I suppose – which is good, they’d look weird with a bunch of moss all over them…

There’s no such thing as a free lunch unless someone else pays for it.

It's a fact of life that you can’t have your cake and eat it too if there’s no more cake left.

What you know can’t hurt you …unless you what you don’t know is that an anvil is about to fall on your head.

Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise unless he works the night shift.

Sure, it doesn’t matter if you win or lose, it’s how you play the game. But if you play poorly, you will likely lose.

2008-05-13T18:55:00.002-05:00

Have you noticed how Boston just exploded in color over the past week and a half? One day: grey, drab, dull, end-of-winter-y. The next: greens and blues and reds and yellows and purples and pinks and oranges everywhere! Birds chirping, sun smiling warmly, leaves fully stretching out from their buds... the world is alive with movement once again!

It's funny. This time of year has always been bittersweet for me. Generally speaking, while I love the colors of spring and the longer days and the sunshine (and even the occasional rain shower), I also grieve the loss of the winter weather, the cold days, the breath I can see in front of me, the numb feeling on my cheeks when I'm outside for a walk, the cozy feeling of cuddling up under blankets at home. Usually, this time of year, I say a sad goodbye to my winter as I gear up for another hot and sweaty summer - which I normally don't look forward to.

But this year, it's different. Maybe my perspective is changing as I gain years in life... or maybe New England has changed my view of the seasons... or maybe this year is just different...

This year, I'm happily saying goodbye to winter. We had a good run, it was fun while it lasted, but hey, it's time to move on and go our separate ways for awhile. [Until next year, so long and take care of yourself, Winter.]

Instead of dreading the idea of sweaty summer days, I've been looking around me a lot over the past weeks as Boston has exploded into an amazing spring. And it seems like the city, our whole corner of the world, has been hiding from something. Afraid to show it's face. Caught up inside itself - scared to show it's true self. Throwing on the mask of winter, self-conscious, and anti-social. Just passing the days by, perhaps even wishing it weren't so, but not able to get itself out of its reverie of despair.

And then, suddenly, one day, it woke up - as if out of a dream - and realized its real worth, its good qualities. Passed a mirror for the first time in months and saw a beautiful reflection staring back at it. And then, BOOM! A broad smile hit its face, it unfolded itself from its self-made cocoon, and jumped up to go out and play. Meet up with old friends, make new ones, look up at the sky and twirl around in the warmth of the sun and the cool tickle of grass beneath its feet. With a twinkle in its eye, it takes a good look at itself, and throws away that mask, all of those debilitatingly self-conscious thoughts, and strolls boldly and confidently down the street - smiling for no other reason than just simply to smile.

I guess it strikes me as odd that this is the first time this feeling has really struck me at the birth of spring. But I guess in the past I've always been so caught up in saying goodbye to my beloved winter, that I've forgotten to notice the wonder of spring. (It could also be that I'm still getting used to a real spring - since in Minnesota, you miss spring if you blink... here in New England, we get a full-blown spring!)

I got off the T really early in my commute home today from work... and walked about a mile and a half to make it home... smiling at the hustle and bustle of people enjoying the beautiful weather outside. I'm a big fan. I like this feeling of spring. And, [sorry Winter], I think spring might becoming my favorite season...

I just love this joyous birth of life at the end of a long drab winter!
[*gasp* - I cannot believe I just said that about my old beloved winter!!!]

Upside-...up?

2008-04-05T09:25:00.002-05:00

Ever wonder what the world would be like if it turned upside-down for the day? [So, maybe you don't, but after reading this, perhaps you will...?]

'Course, you'd still be "right-side-up" in relation to the way things used to be - to heighten the effects of the world turning upside-down so you can better appreciate the change.

What would things look like?

We'll say, for the sake of simplicity, that gravity stays relative to whatever position you or anything else is in. So, your gravity stays "down" to you, while everything else has it's gravity "down" to it (which would be "up" to you). Then, I suppose the question would be what would happen to your gravity if you touched something in the "upside-down" world? Or, likewise, what would happen to its gravity? Would it be a matter of which thing had more mass? For example, if you touched a lamp or something with less mass than you, would it yield to your gravity? And, similarly, if you touched a sofa or something with more mass than you, would you yield to its gravity? That seems plausible... though it'd be awfully weird. And then, following this vein, if you touched something of equal mass, would your collective gravities cancel each other out, making you both temporarily weightless? And you'd both just sort of float there - sandwiched between your equal forces of gravity pressing down on each other? Hmm, really odd... and totally sweet!

But, perhaps that's not what would happen at all. Perhaps, since your 'world' is significantly smaller than the rest of the world (that has been turned upside-down), if you touched anything in the upside-down world, you'd automatically change to its relative gravity direction? That'd be really weird, too - and almost eliminate the whole point of this whole idea. Let's say that this is not what happens, just because it doesn't suit my needs for this imagined world. :) [I love being able to make the rules...hehehe.]

Maybe nothing happens to your gravity or the gravity of the object/person/whatever you touch. Maybe you both keep your relative gravity. -Yeah, actually, I really like that. Okay, I'm now officially defining this as the rules for gravity in this upside-down world (minus you, who's still right-side-up).

But that's all the practical stuff. I guess I'm more interested in what everything would look like from the upside-down perspective. You know how if you look at someone's face upside-down for an extended period of time, your vision realigns itself to make that person's chin seem to be the top of his/her face? And it looks oddly both correct and really off? Yeah, imagine that happening to the whole world!!!

Pictures would realign themselves. [What would the Mona Lisa look like upside-down?]
Your favorite landscape views would have grass above and sky below. Skyscrapers would point "down" in relation to you. You'd walk on the ceiling of buildings - have to dodge lights instead of furniture as you walk. There's a whole score of crazy things that would change perspective in all sorts of cool ways! The possibilities! [Ooh, brain overload. Pause for readjustment...]

It's also kinda fun to imagine what the rest of the world would be thinking when they saw you walking upside-down relative to them. I mean, as far as they're all concerned, they never changed orientation. YOU did. So you'd be like the ultimate party-trick to them. Or a really fantastic magician. Or some crazy anomaly. -Let's be serious...all of those things would be pretty freakin' cool, right? :)

[So, a little odd for a Saturday morning? Definitely. But what else are you gonna do on Saturday at 9:00 am when you've woken up and want to sleep more but can't make yourself fall back to sleep? I'd like to see you come up with something better.]

Twitter-pated

2008-03-07T13:25:00.004-05:00

The smell of spring is once again floating in the air. And with it comes more sunshine and warm days, rain replaces snow and ice, and the world begins to wake up for another year.

It's a fun time of year. Buds begin to peek out of trees and flower beds, the sun actually starts to warm your face when it shines, and birds chirp once more. You know, it's funny. Every year, when spring approaches, I hear birds chirping for the first time since winter began and realize that I haven't heard them all winter. Every spring, it's a pleasant surprise to once again hear the chirping birds outside of my window. And it's not a 'oh, good, they're back' sort of feeling. For me, it's more a 'oh yeah, I forgot birds exist and chirp and twitter around' sort of feeling.

For as much as I like winter, I really have come to appreciate the change of seasons from winter to spring. It's refreshing, like a huge breath of fresh air. I walk outside and just have to smile - if only because the world is suddenly smiling back at me. This is the time of year when I remember that winter can be a bit of a strain, especially in the late months of winter. And I remember that Boston does seasons incredibly well.

It's also the season for shaking up romance. Relationships end, begin, move to next steps. Remember the second half of Bambi (after Bambi's mother dies and he goes off to spend the rest of his winter with his dad), when the Owl describes "twitter-pated" to Bambi and his pals? Yeah, he's totally right. And it doesn't just happen to forest animals. Humans are no different. Giddy and giggly females oohing and aahing over some guy, young males on the watch for new pretty faces. Sure, life isn't completely ridiculous like this every minute of every day, but you know you see it here and there as you walk down the street, or catch a movie, or go to the grocery store. It's the 'twitter-pated' season. And it affects all of us in some way or another. And as much as people may scoff at this seasonal ritual of ridiculous behavior, it's actually rather fun.

It's funny that it's this time of year. Well, maybe not funny "haha" - but just kinda strange that you can almost set your clock by the 'twitter-pated' season.

Oh, the equinox is almost here, time for 'twitter-pation'!

You hear people say that there must be "something in the air." And they're not all that far off from the truth, however figuratively they were speaking. 'Twitter-pation' must come from that feeling of being alive once again. The end of the 'hibernation' season of winter... it's now time to stretch our wings and see the world with new eyes... the world's waking up and feeling beautiful again - and so are we!

A sudden yearning for the suburbs??? What IS this?

2007-09-01T11:58:00.000-05:00

My new favorite place in the Greater Boston area: Watertown Square, and few blocks on each street shooting off from the Square.

Why? You may ask. You may even go on to say, "You live in Boston, for Pete's sake! Why oh why is Watertown suddenly so cool?"

And, it's a valid question. Watertown is a suburb, feels like a suburb, looks like a suburb, and through MBTA travel, you can only get to it by bus (if you're not from around here, this doesn't make as much sense to you, but anyone from Boston will tell you that that is a sure sign of a suburb).

Let me list a few things right off the bat:
1. Watertown is where I go every two weeks to get a massage from a good friend and fellow dancer. And let me tell you - she's amazing! She really knows her stuff and she's really good and giving advice and relating the massage therapy to my life (or her other clients' lives, as it were).

2. I just found the Watertown Library. Cutest place EVER!!! I'm sitting in a little bay window type thing in a wooden chair with legs on the front and rocking slats on the back. Really comfortable. Wifi free everywhere in the building AND it's way more reliable than the BPL-Copley Wifi.

3. This little breakfast/lunch place across the street from the Library. Really good food and really cheap! Friendly people, great atmosphere. I'm a fan.

So, ultimately, this boils down to and "I wonder..." moment.

I wonder if I miss the suburban life - the slower pace, the friendlier atmosphere, the cute little places."

It's a good question, yeah? [Okay, okay, it technically wasn't even a question, but a statement offered up to promote discussion. I get it, I get it. We move on.]

And I think the answer to my 'non-question' is yes, in some ways I do miss the slower life on a non-city. I say "non-city" because I don't know if I want the true suburban life back - with it's housing developments and urban sprawl and soul-sucking blandness. But a cut little suburb like Watertown? Yeah, I dig it. It's close enough to Boston, but far enough away to get away from the city atmosphere and "hurry" mentality.

Does this mean I want to move to Watertown? I don't know. Not right now. I don't think I'm quite ready yet to give up my life o' glammer in the city quite yet. I like living in Boston a lot - I like that things are always just right there, that all forms of the T are readily accessible for me. That I can walk just about anywhere I want to go. I couldn't walk to Boston from Watertown without allowing myself a good portion of my day for walk-time. But, perhaps in a couple of years - if I'm still in the Boston area - I may one day be posting to this blog from a permanent Watertown location. Who knows?

A blogger's epiphany - or, a rediscovery of the real reason I'm here.

2007-08-26T23:24:00.000-05:00

Wow. It's really been awhile since I last wrote anything. I guess you could say I needed a break from the blog world.

But why? you ask...

And it's a valid question. A question with a very good answer, too.
[Well, maybe "good" isn't the right word. More like, a very definite answer.]

Well... you say, probingly.

Right. Okay. Here goes...

I stopped because I started to feel all of this pressure when posting to this blog. Pressure to live up to the image I want people to see when they read this - whether they know me or not. Pressure to make myself believe that I was feeling a certain way. Pressure to post something in line with the way I wanted to be feeling at the time, instead of what I was actually feeling. And so, this blog became something that only allowed me to be the "ideal me" that I expect myself to be. It's a lot to live up when you set yourself standards that you can't ever live up to because they don't fit you right. I found myself editing as I typed...going back and deleting lines because I worried what x person or y person would think. At first, it was little edits - like a misspelling. And I said to myself, "Oh, but I edit emails like that, too. That's okay." But really, it was a path I never wanted to start on. I promised myself, when I started this blog, that I would write what I felt - what came out on the screen - WITHOUT EDITING - just me, raw, with no worries about who's reading it or what they think.

And that's exactly what I didn't end up doing.

As I told more and more people about it, excited as I was that I had this wonderful vault of me in my own little online space, I started writing more and more to one person or another. Or editing based on what a certain person would think if they ever read it. It wasn't always the same person. It didn't always happen everytime I sat down to write. But I created this pressure from what I thought others would think if I wrote something that suddenly didn't allow me much room to write anything.

And suddenly, I'm left wondering why I even have this blog at all if all I ever do is write what I think other people want to read, or what other people think Is "me."

It's not that I don't want people to know I have this blog, but there was something safe about the anonymity when I first created it. Something that allowed me to feel I could write the truth about what I feel - the whole truth - without the fear of being judged. We all fear that judgment that others rain down upon us. Because it happens, everywhere. Everyone does it - everyone judges everyone else. I judge other people all the time. And sometimes I have to kick myself for the things I find myself thinking about another person - remind myself that I have no right to judge him/her.

But, that's not what this post is about. Another day perhaps. For now, back to the subject at hand.

I think what ultimately did me in and made me stop posting for 2.5 months is that I found myself emailing myself blog topics that were "safe" and "neutral" to post about - that wouldn't put me under judgment - that would show me only in a certain light - that wouldn't *really* push any major buttons. And they were so boring. So not what I wanted to write about on this blog. I would sit with my fingers on the keyboard just staring at the screen - no words flowing to my head. It was like I was back in 9th grade trying to write my report on some subject for Civics class but having no words to put to paper because the subject matter interested me not at all.

So, I stopped. I couldn't do it anymore. It had to end.

Instead, I took my summer and traveled. I went to Lindy Hop events all over New England, went down to DC, went up to Montreal quite a few times. I focused on fitting myself back into my life. And I've come out on the other side of summer realizing that I miss this blog - I miss what I originally intended it to be. To quote my own blog heading: either "a portal into the complicated workings of my mind" or "just a loosely connected string of ideas that pour out of my head and ooze into the keyboard of my laptop." Ultimately, I left that for any reader to decide. The important parts of that, however, are: 1) a portal into my mind - meaning this is really who I am, just me, that's what you get; and 2) ideas that pour out of my head and ooze into the keyboard of my laptop - meaning it's not edited, it's not fine-tuned, it's just raw one-sided conversation in a way. Me talking at the screen through my fingers on the keyboard. The fact that the words happen to be public for anyone to read is supposed to be utterly beside the point.

It's time to go back to that original way of thinking. To the original purpose for which this blog was created. It's time to take my blog back for myself. And to hell with what anyone reading this thinks about me.

And tonight - what's on my mind? I'm sick of being alone.
[I've said it before. I imagine it won't be the last time I say it.]

I look at my life, and I'm really happy with it. I am, truly. I have a great job that I love. I work with intelligent people who challenge me every day and appreciate my skills and talents and who accept me as a vital part of the team. I live in a great apartment, in a place where I feel more settled than I've felt since I left home for college 8 years ago. I love to dance, and I have the means with which to pursue that hobby to my heart's content. I have a wonderful, supportive family. I have great friends here in Boston and still back at home in the Midwest.

But I don't have that "special someone" [however hokey that sounds, it's hard to put it any other way]

It's not that I can't be happy without a guy in my life. It's not that I have nothing to live for because I have no boyfriend. Far from it. I'm often the person saying I don't need someone, that I can do things on my own and be happy with who I am. And I can. I'm very self-sufficient. I've worked hard at that for the past 5.5 years (since my last - and only - real relationship). I think the feeling of being dependent on another person really scared me. I won't live my life for another person, which is what I did in that first relationship, back in college. But not now. Now, I'll live my life for myself.

And that's all well and good. Except that I sometimes worry that I've gone too far, that I've become too attached to the single way of life, that I've closed myself off to allowing someone into my life enough to create a relationship. Have I? I don't think I'm closed off. If anything, I feel more open and honest with myself than I did 8 years ago when I met my first boyfriend. I'm pretty comfortable with who I am (let's be honest, no one can say they're 100% comfortable with who they are, and I'm no exception). And each day, I learn how to be even more comfortable with me.

Fabulous. Great. Superb. Splendid.

Why can't I meet a guy?
Why can't I meet someone with whom I can start a fulfilling relationship - or even just someone I can have fun with?

The loneliness factor doesn't consume me, really. It just hits me every so often when I'm confronted with too many couples - like walking through the Public Gardens on a nice day, or riding home on the T on a Saturday night after everyone's coming home from their Saturday night dates. Walking down the sidewalk in a college kid neighborhood or going shopping at the mall. It always hits me. And not so much because I despair of ever finding someone. No, really, it's mostly jealousy. I'm pretty jealous of all these people I don't know who've found someone to be with. Whether it's someone they're committed to or someone for "just right now" - I don't know. I don't know them. But the fact remains that they're with someone, and I'm seemingly perpetually alone. And sometimes it gets a little too far under my skin. What do I do with that? I haven't got anything to work with when that hits me. I haven't got anything to latch onto, any part of that to take control of. It's an emotion I'm afraid I'm not very good at. Jealousy. It's actually one of the emotions I shy away from looking at because I see it as really high on the negative emotion list and I try to keep myself positive.

But jealousy is a natural emotion. It can't be ignored. I need to let it out, right? Need to allow myself to feel it so I can try and understand it better - in hopes of finding a way to deal with it healthily when it hits me, or at least find a way to work with it when I feel it.

Jealousy. [It's a Natalie Merchant song, and it's an emotion I'm not all that comfortable with. Go figure.]

It makes me want something (or, in this case, someone that I don't have. It makes me forget about what I do have as I suddenly have an obsessive focus on what I don't have. And, as it affects me like this, I sort of close off to the world - decide I need to take an evening to veg out and wallow for a couple of hours until I can suppress it enough to get on with life. Is that unhealthy or what? So, maybe the way to work with it is to recognize and accept when it hits me, reassess, and focus my brain energy away from what I don't have and tick off some things that I DO have - thereby skirting around that whole "need a few hours to try and get the jealousy to go away" and instead move on with life. I can't control the fact that at that precise moment I don't have a boyfriend. But I can control where my thoughts are focused, and what they're focused on.

Maybe there's hope for me yet. I'm learning to work with my world and find the happiest way to exist within it, despite all of the negativity around me.

And I'm learning that the best way to find that happiness is to just be myself, lay it raw, open the gates and allow myself to be less than perfect - because I certainly can't expect myself to be perfect - that would require me to presume that I could be perfect.

Well, now that I've extracted a moral for myself out of my own rambling thoughts... [Ha!]

Doesn't really change that fact that I feel lonely tonight. That I'd like to have someone here. But, tonight's not my night, I guess. I'll have to wait for another night instead.

With that I'll leave you. Good night all.

[Okay, I totally lied. I'll really leave you with this: FOOT!]

Stop worrying!

2007-06-21T21:35:00.000-05:00

You know what my problem is? I worry too much.

How many times have you heard someone say that? Not many...
Think I'm wrong? Read it again...

People don't say, "You know what my problem is? I worry too much."
Yeah, now you're with me. They usually say, "You know what your problem is? You worry too much."

Where am I going with this? Back to the original statement:
You know what my problem is? I worry too much.

I do worry too much. And it's not usually about anything worth worrying about. It's odd. Oftentimes, when I find myself in a situation that would be worth worrying about, I feel calm and act on the mindset that things will turn out the way they turn out and there's no sense in worrying about it.

That said, I worry about the silliest things. Whether I'm thinking too much about something I can't control. Whether I should be stepping a certain way when I'm dancing. What will happen if I don't get my laundry done on the night I originally planned to do it on. When's the bus coming?--When's the bus coming?--When's the bus coming?

I say "the silliest things" because they are, when you really think about it.

Am I thinking too much about this?
Yes. You are. Stop thinking about how much you're thinking about it. Move on. If you're gonna think about it, you're gonna think about it. If you're not, you're not. No point in worrying about the time spent thinking (or not) about it.

Should I be stepping that way when I do a swing-out?
On the surface of things, that's a valid question. But context is key here. I generally ask myself that question while social dancing - exactly when I shouldn't be thinking about it. Save it for the practice session later in the week! For now, just enjoy a night of dancing!

What will happen if I don't get my laundry done tonight?
Um, it'll get done another night. So what if you planned to do it tonight? Things change, evenings fill up, rework the schedule. It's not the end of the world.

When's the bus coming?
When it comes. MBTA buses - not the most reliable timetable. If you're worried about being late (a somewhat more valid thing to worry about, to be sure), there's a very simple solution: LEAVE EARLIER.

It's so funny, because the problem is not that I don't know the obvious answers to my 'worrywart' questions. The problem is that I can't stop them from bubbling up. The nervous stomachache comes and I can't think straight and I'm off in worry-land again without really knowing how I got there. It always takes me a minute to get my bearings and understand what it is I'm worrying over.

It's something I'd really like to cut out of my life. Maybe it's impossible to cut out completely. We do have the word worry in our language for a reason. It's an emotional response just like anger and happiness and surprise. But the silly worrying over things I can't control needs to stop. I just don't know how to stop the cycle of worrying before I realize I'm worrying.

The worst of it is, sometimes when I get my bearings in worry-land, I figure out that I'm worrying about worrying too much, and find that I'm actually not really all that worried about anything in particular besides whether I'm worrying too much.

It's like an addiction, in a way. It's so ingrained in my system, that I find I don't know what I'd do if I wasn't worrying about something. And I don't like that at all. I'd so much prefer to be focused on something more worthwhile.

So, I'm outside the norm when I say:
You know what my problem is? I worry too much.

But, hey, it's true. Now I just need to figure out how to falsify that statement in my life and get on with other things.

Changes

2007-05-23T19:13:00.000-05:00

Wow, it's been a long time. And in that time, I became an even bigger nerd than I already was (...am?). I code shell scripts in Unix all day. And I ADORE it. Every day is a new puzzle! It's totally rad. Okay, so we know that's not really all I do...I also get to play with Excel! What could be better than this job? [Okay, I know most everyone reading this will say, "Uh, yeah, I can think of a billion things better than coding in Unix and playing with Excel all day..." - but all you people who say that are just fooling yourselves. Just sayin']

But, the point of this post is not to talk about my new job. Or how nerdy I am. [I'll leave that to you to talk about on your own time. I already know how nerdy I am, so I feel no need to discuss it further.]

No, really, the point is to talk about change. It struck me the other day at JUST HOW MUCH my life has changed since this time last year. May 2006 was my first hint at relief from the hellish existence I lived while working at BES. May 2006 still had a couple in Boston whom I couldn't stand to be around. May 2006 was the last month that I could say I'd never known what it was like to be unemployed. May 2006 I had yet to ever have been evicted from an apartment. May 2006 I still lived in Cambridge, and was pining over a boy long gone who was soon to move out of the country. May 2006 I had a very different set of friends, a very different style of life, a very different way of looking at things.

It's funny how much can change in a year. May 2007: I work in an office so completely different in every possible way from BES, I can honestly say that they're polar opposites. May 2007: I love my job, I don't have need to think about leaving, and I'm excited about my prospects of growing with and moving up in the company. May 2007: I don't really care about that couple anymore...they don't affect me...they live in a different state...when I do see them, it's cool. May 2007: I look back on the last 12 months and realize that I was unemployed for 7 of them. Wow. May 2007: I have lived in 3 apartments in the last year (including the one I was at in May 2006 - from which we were eventually evicted). May 2007: I went from Cambridge to Beacon Hill, and then came back across the river into Somerville. May 2007: pining over a different boy, though oddly, this current one is also not in this country. [It's quite possible he's a hot French-Canadian...quite possible.] May 2007: I have settled into a good group of people that I'm comfortable with, and that I feel like myself around. May 2007: I feel very settled in how my life runs these days - I've found my groove, if you will. May 2007: I see things with a much more "chill" attitude these days. Things are what they are, work with what I have the control to change and let the rest happen as it will.

It's amazing to me to look back on this year. And it's amazing to me to see, with all of the changes that I've been through in one year, how little the world actually changes. It's humbling in a lot of ways. I feel a strong sense of place in the part of the world I'm carving out for myself, and yet, in spite of all that, the world continues to run - my LIFE continues to run - no matter what details change, big or small.

Last year, I was constantly thinking about how I could make it to a dance weekend, or any possible way to get me out of the city and away from my day-to-day life. This year, I love my day-to-day life, I travel to all sorts of events, I've been to Canada twice for AMAZING dance events. [Yes, that's a major feat for me, as funny as it may seem to you. It's true, even though I've lived in Minnesota my whole life, I'd never been to Canada before December of last year. When I say I was in Minnesota my whole life, I pretty much mean that literally (with a few small exceptions).]

So, with all of the changes that have occurred over the past year, I have to wonder how the next year will look. Will it be as tumultuous a ride as the past year has been? Will it be more so? Or will it be calm and give me a year of relative peace? Where will I be a year from now? Grad school? -Probably not quite yet. In a different city? -Possible, but not likely...I like my current job way too much. In a different country? -Not very likely yet, although it is true that I have been saying for the last six months that I want to move to Montreal. Or more drastic than that even: married? -yikes, that would be crazy.

Ah well, time to sit back and enjoy the ride. One last observation before signing off, though: it's funny that I measure years on the Mays. It's the 5th month of the year...not like it's a quarter or halfway through. Not like it's January or December. Not even like it's my birthday month (it's not). I guess it always just seems to be the beginning of a bunch of changes, or a really new thing, or the month that I start looking forward to big changes or big events coming up in my life. Thinking about it, I've measured years on the Mays for quite awhile now. At least since college, since we took our last finals in the first week of June. But it's possible I even started before then. Maybe it's left over from the school mentality...because May's the last full month of school before summer vacation. So perhaps it's not quite that odd. Whatever, I still think it's a bit odd.

And on a loosely related subject, I'm now totally reminded of "Seasons of Love" from Rent... How do you measure a year?

In daylights?
In sunsets?
In midnights?
In cups of coffee?
In inches?
In miles?
In laughter?
In strife?
In five hundred, twenty-five thousand, six hundred minutes...?

Or...
In diapers?
Report cards?
In spoked wheels?
In speeding tickets?
In dollars?
Contracts?
In funerals?
In births?

As for me, my measures are more like:

In career paths...
In apartments...
In new roommates...
In number of dance events...

But most importantly:

In distance from Mays...

My life is meaningless without the Internet!!! (What???)

2007-03-06T18:31:00.000-05:00

It's funny how much we take the Internet for granted these days, isn't it? You don't even really realize how much it means to your everyday life until you find yourself without it for a week. And suddenly, it feels like the world is shattering down around you.

Needless to say, this recently happened to me. I just moved, and my new roommate was gone for the week. And there was a password on her Internet wireless connection, and she didn't know it off-hand. And I found myself Internet-less.

I was actually pretty amazed at how lost I felt! No email readily available. No blog readily available to ooze thoughts into at random. No way to easily check how to get places by bus/T from my new apartment to the rest of Boston (I had to find and rely on those little bus schedule pamphlet thingies...*gasp*). No way to check the temp outside or the weather for the week. No access to info about the upcoming dance event I'm going to.

And I began to realize just how much my days are structured around using the Internet. I always check the weather each morning. I generally use MBTA in some capacity about 3-4 times a week to figure out how to get somewhere. I communicate mostly through email - especially with friends across the country. I generally expect one to two business items in my inbox that I have to act on in addition to friend correspondence. When I get bored, Yahoo! solitaire is where you're sure to find me. I read an online comic 3 times a week.

And on top of all the daily/weekly uses, here's the big thing that hindered my ability to lead a normal life last week: no Google to check up on the random things one finds oneself in need of checking from time to time! A word I needed to look up - sure, I have a real dictionary...but it's packed somewhere, and dictionary.com is so much faster anyway. Finding out about the show schedule of my favorite music group - yeah, had to put that off 'til this week. I wrote my last post in Word then pasted it and retroactively posted it (changed the date to the past) to make it an accurate account of my thoughts.

I mentioned in the beginning of this post that this is pretty funny. And it is. I find it all highly amusing. Why? Because 5 years ago this would not have been an issue for me. Well, okay, that's a lie. I'm older...maybe 10 years ago at this point. [Dammit, I am old! Where did all that time go???]

Point is: it's amusing to me because I can remember what it was like not to have this wonderfully useful and fantastically convenient Internet at my fingertips. I remember when it was all slow and rather useless and when it wasn't capitalized (internet vs. Internet). It was easier to look at the thermometer outside for the temp. Or call because not everyone had an email address. Or *gasp* use a real dictionary to look up a word I wasn't familiar with.

Funny how quickly the Internet crept into our lives and in some ways took over...

And funny how relieved I feel this week now that I have my email, blog, temperature, online solitaire and web comic right at my fingertips again.

Caffeine effects...

2007-03-02T23:23:00.000-05:00

So, I’m sitting here, at 11:23 pm on a Friday evening getting slowly groggier and groggier due to my sipping on a glass of Coke.

Yes, that’s right, you read that correctly. I’m getting groggy because I’m drinking Coca-Cola. The caffeinated kind, yes [because we know that was your next question].

Caffeine does not make me jittery, suddenly awake, wired, or alert. It actually does the exact opposite. It literally puts me to sleep. I don’t often buy Coke, I never drink coffee, and I can’t really drink caffeinated tea either. You can be sure that if I’m cracking open a can of caffeinated anything, I’ll be sleeping or zombie-like within the hour.

I’m not really sure why either. I certainly haven’t always been this way. In high school, I loved Mountain Dew. Coke was an okay alternative (though Pepsi was nasty…I didn’t touch that stuff). I also got into Surge and Kick when those came out in the late nineties. Lots of caffeine. But somewhere between then and the end of my undergrad years in college created this complete reversal in the effects of caffeine on my system. It no longer gets the jump-start; instead it merely starts going into sleep-mode.

What’s funny is that this post is actually written in two segments – not a common occurrence for me. I usually will write a post all at once, since I generally post in a sort of free-flow, train-of-thought sort of style. [At least, that’s the goal most of the time.] But I couldn’t finish it…my eyes kept drooping to the closing point, my head kept nodding to the side, and my brain got foggier and foggier to the point were I couldn’t string together sentences because I couldn’t keep thoughts straight in my head. It’s so weird – such a strange sensation compared to what one would expect from caffeine. It’s like I took a sleeping pill and it’s slowly but steadily taking effect. Except that it’s not a sleeping pill…it’s Coca-Cola…the king of caffeine!

I’ve been told that this reaction to caffeine could be explained as an immediate high followed almost instantly by a huge crash from the after-effects of the caffeine. I guess that could be true…and yet it doesn’t make sense in my head because I don’t feel any high when I first take a sip of my Coke (or whatever caffeinated thing I’m drinking). But then, perhaps the crash is so instantaneous that I don’t consciously notice the initial high. Who knows?

Just another one of those oddities about life, huh? Indeed…

"I will miss..." - the Beacon Hill Nostalgia Day

2007-02-25T03:02:00.000-05:00

Moving time again. Which means that today was "Nostalgia Day" for me. The day when I suddenly miss every little bit of the neighborhood I'll be leaving. Nostalgia - such a happy, depressing, exciting, sad feeling. Completely contradictory in its emotional nature. Ha!

Today, the list ran quite long as I reflected on all of the things that I loved about living here. Here's a randomly assorted list that attempts to get all of those things gathered together [but it's certainly not all-inclusive!]:

I will miss...
- late night talks with Pete
- the confused smell of several scented candles coming from Tim's room
- the slant of my room [a good 7-10 degrees, I think!]
- having a dishwasher
- the ease of living with Tim and Pete
- my view of the two Hancock towers from my bedroom window
- free heat
- the sore muscles of the 2.5 block uphill walk followed by the 4-flight stair climb to get home each day [yes, I'm crazy]
- the quaintness of the streets on the Hill
- Charles St 2 blocks away
- a really big Whole Foods at my disposal
- Fred's Video and Mike's Movies
- the cozy feeling of walking home through narrow, brownstone house lined streets
- my 10-minute walk to the Commons
- my crosstown walks to the grocery store and back
- my favorite Borders on Newbury/Boylston
- the Starbucks on Charles and Beacon - because it has to fit into the Charles St style instead of plastering itself green
- the new Charles/MGH T-stop
- my close proximity to the BPL at Copley
- the look on people's faces when I tell them I live on Beacon Hill
- my cute little laundromat
- the new laundromat I found this morning that I wish had always been "my cute little laundromat"
- dry cleaning stores on every other corner on the Hill
- the little yappy "punt dogs" on the end of everyone's leashes
- Tim's dumpster diving treasures
- listening to the boys practicing guitar/bass/songs behind the closed doors of their bedrooms
- my showerhead
- the "secret" entrance to a part of the Underground Railroad [it's not actually all that secret, but feels like it, and certainly more exciting if it's called "secret"]
- a new path to my front door every time I walk home
- discovering odd houses, sidewalks, streets, windows, stores, speed bumps on my walks through the Hill
- the fact that getting out of Beacon Hill is easier than getting in, since the one-ways change direction at the top of the Hill
- my proximity to my favorite view of Boston from the Longfellow Bridge
- the sense of connection to historical Boston from living in and around these old buildings on the Hill
- having the apartment number "4R"
- cobblestones, cobblestones, and more cobblestones
- eager tasters for new recipes I discover and attempt to replicate [Tim & Pete]
- Tim's mom's cookies [mmm...]
- Pete's stories and descriptions of work - I will never understand fully what he means, but it's always riveting because he's so animated in the telling of them
- my little spice/baking supply shelf
- climbing the counter to get at the stuff on the second shelf of my cupboard in the kitchen
- the pleasant feeling I always get upon entering the neighborhood
- the UPS store on Charles St
- Panificio
- Antique stores galore!
- half sliding down the icy hills when leaving my apartment
- the rooftop computer room on an adjacent building on our street [complete with computer and comfy chair and desk!]
- rolling around my kitchen with my saved-from-the-garbage, $150+ office chair when I'm too lazy to stand up and walk the 3 feet across the room
- the crazy colors in the painting of a Beacon Hill streetlamp hanging in the living room
- the 3 bricks outside my bedroom window about whose whereabouts I've always been mildly curious
- hearing the things that are supposed to keep mice away constantly emitting their soft clicking in the background of the otherwise silent apartment

Oh, man, most of all...I'll just miss Beacon Hill!!!

[I love that I could have saved myself the trouble of writing the entire list just by writing that last sentence, which pretty much sums up the nostalgic feeling I'm talking about in this post...but then, no one ever accused me of being concise.]

Bubble gum and pencil shavings...

2007-02-20T22:53:00.000-05:00

Call in three months time and I'll be fine I know
Well maybe not that fine, but I'll survive anyhow
I won't recall the names and places of each sad occasion
But that's no consolation--here and now

So what happens now?
(Another suitcase in another hall...)

So what happens now?
(Take your picture off another wall...)

Where am I going to?
(You'll get by - you always have before...)

Where am I going to?

Man, job searching is certainly not an uplifting experience. The ups and downs, the back and forth, the false hopes and sore disappointments - it's a rollercoaster ride with your own life strapped precariously in the front seat, blindfolded. A recent disappointment of my own current job search put this song into my head. (Well, really just the chorus, but upon looking up the lyrics to ensure I had the right wording, the verse I included above struck a particular chord as well.)

I guess I'm struck by how so much of life can seem like a blind rollercoaster ride. Not necessarily even referring to any one area of life. Just life in general. It's unpredictable. It's exhilarating. It's terrifying. It's calm one minute and bumpy the next. It's amazingly adept at making our stomachs leap and our hearts race unexpectedly. It both makes us wish that we were anywhere but on this ride and that the ride would never end. It's hard to say whether its more fun to have someone beside us in the coaster car or whether the ride is more fun if that car is void of company - both are true at different points in the ride.

But we're never gonna survive unless we get a little crazy...

I suppose those are Seal's words, but I hear them from Alanis Morrisette on my computer. It's true, though, right? I mean, I'm going on and on about this rollercoaster ride we call life - describing it's similarities with what we know of actual rollercoaster rides. But what does that really say? That life is crazy. It's unpredictable. It's fun, exciting, and scary. And then Alanis pipes in to remind me that we need to be a little crazy in order to survive this ride we've elected to take. [Okay, one could make the argument that we don't actually elect to take the ride at all, but that we're forced into the car upon birth...but I'm not gonna get that philosophical today. I leave it to you to ponder if you choose.]

Crazy - not in the "clinical" sense. More like getting a little crazy in the way we approach life, the way we take control of certain situations, the way we interpret experiences as they happen and after they've passed us by. Really, when you think about all the stuff we go through as individuals on our own coaster tracks of life, we kinda have to be crazy to continue to travel along those tracks, huh? There are so many things happening to challenge us - mentally, physically, emotionally. Job-searching and unemployment are the specific topics that I refer to in this post, but there are so many others. Love, relationships, friendships. Pursuits of happiness - in th workplace, in living situations, in hobbies and recreation, in social structures. Belief systems. Overall health - physical health, fitness, eating right - mental health - emotional health, admitting feelings we'd rather not, experiencing emotions we're not sure we can handle fully. Man, we're one crazy group of creatures!

I suddenly have no idea where I'm going with this. I guess I started it to get the Evita song out of my head, then to rant a bit in a general way about my displeasure in the job-hunt. But it got a little philosophical after listening to that Alanis cover of an enigmatic Seal song...and now I'm searching for answers to rather large life questions...or perhaps just rambling about big ideas and thoughts that bounce around in the background of my mind. Huh. Right then... now that I really have no conclusion, I'll leave you. [Hehe, man, I hate it when that happens...]

---
Oh, the title? Yeah, I dunno. It's as good a title as any for this post, I say.

A Toast to Winter

2007-02-05T09:27:00.000-05:00

It's finally cold enough to officially dub this season winter!!!

Which means that going outside requires the 10-minute layering process to guard against the biting winds and skin-numbing cold air. It means that you can see your breath in the middle of the day. It means that the smell of snow rides on the wintry breezes - that is, if it's warm enough to snow.

I can't say that New England knows winter quite as well as Minnesota does. I have to give the winter season to Minnesotans - they really know how to live this season to its fullest. And as Minnesota is rather famous for its wintry weather (making it hard for some people - particularly coastal natives - to believe that Minnesota enjoys a warm and balmy summer as well), I suppose it's suiting that they do it so well. But I will concede that New England does its best to create the cold, icy world of winter in all of winter's glory.

For me, winter is a magical world, bringing to mind fantastic words and phrases. Numbing cold - frost - frozen - chilly - billowing snow. With these come equally fantastic images of frosted windowpanes, warm fireplaces, steaming cocoa, snowmen in the front yard, and, of course, the wonderful "snow-baby effect."

Winter creates the world of frozen ponds, rivers, and gutter puddles. Its winds whip past us as we walk, pinching our cheeks and numbing our legs through our jeans. Scarves, hats, winter coats, mittens, ear muffs, face masks, boots, thick wool socks are the costumes of the season - which people use in different combinations to create a bubble of insulation to allow them safe passage from place to place through Jack Frost's Wintry Wonderland.

The joy of winter rests in those breath vapors dancing in front of you as you walk. Its in the thawing-out feeling that comes when you get inside from the cold - your cheeks once again easily movable as the numbness leaves them. Its ice skaters laughing on the Frog Pond in the Common. Its in the "blinking red" of the old John Hancock tower signaling "snow ahead." Its hot chocolate after a good frolic in the snow. Its cuddling up under blankets while watching the cold winds dance through the night, the frost slowly appear on the windowpane, the snow billow past creating a silent shining landscape of white. Its bright colored mittens, hand-knit scarves and hats, big lumpy coats hiding their occupants inside. And its the beginning of that Christmas song:
Frosted windowpanes,
Candles gleaming inside,
Painted candy canes on the tree.
Santa's on his way,
He's filled his sleigh with things -
Things for you and for me.

It's that time of year
When the world falls in love,
Every song you hear seems to say,
'Merry Christmas,
May your New Year dreams come true!'

Winter brings a sense of childhood back to everyone - even as we feel we've forgotten as we drive through the hazardous icy roads on our way home from work. We can't help but remember the days of our youth, when we raced our friends down the sledding hills, soaked our play-clothes completely from rolling in the snow, built the best snowman on the block, and kicked up the snow in front of us as we patrolled the white slopes of our own winter wonderlands. Memories of warm soup and hot cocoa after a neighborhood snowball fight fill our heads. The inevitable need to go to the bathroom just when Mom finished the 15-minute ordeal of wrapping us up to play on the cold, snowy Saturday afternoon. Winter meant Christmas - Santa - presents! It meant snow-days from school, or "dangerously cold weather days" by declaration of the Governor if you lived in Minnesota (and I imagine in the surrounding states as well). Winter creates that youthful spirit in our adult lives as we hear the new generation laughing and running and tumbling in wintry bliss.

There's something very satisfying in the feeling of being utterly chilled to the bone, then stepping into a warm, cozy living room with a cup of cocoa and a pair of fuzzy slippers. And something so satisfying about that cold bubble that you in your warm insulated bubble you create for yourself each day. So, as you shiver slightly underneath you numerous layers, looking out across the frozen river to the snowy roofs on opposite bank, I invite you to raise your thermos of steamy cocoa, full of bobbing mini marshmallows, and join me in toasting this cold, icy season. Here's to winter!!!

Yeah, I just burned my tongue, too. That's half the fun!

[This post was inspired in part by this wonderful season, but also in part from a request by a reader for a toast to winter after reading my toast to fall. Stay tuned as the seasons change yet again and perhaps inspiration will strike again to produce a toast to the spring!]

Age limits and dating...good idea or bad idea?

2007-01-27T17:39:00.000-05:00

Should there be an age limit on guys (or girls, if that's your preference) with dating potential? Should we have a "floor" and "ceiling" age (to steal terms from the math world). In other words, should we assign a minimum and maximum age limit to whom we'd consider dating?

I know that the answer is rather complex, and rests a lot upon your own age. When you're an adult, there's a law about the minimum age, sure. But most adults would set their age-minimum higher than that law requires, so that's not an issue. But as an adult, the age range that's reasonable to date within grows a lot bigger on either side. When you're in school, the age range is generally +/- 1 or 2 years on either side of your own age/grade. But in your twenties, things spread out. All the sudden, people over 30 aren't THAT old any more...mainly because you're approaching that age with every passing year. [Yes, I know that last statement was an egregiously obvious one, just roll with me, I'm still warming up.]

I can only imagine that the age range grows even bigger when you're in your 30s, and above even.

But what is this "age range" I keep referring to? Is it self-imposed and/or self-defined? I feel like it's partially an individual thing. Everyone has their own tastes and comfort zones. But part of that age range assignment comes from society's rules. There is a society-approved "age range" for different ages of your life. In high school, college, your 20s, your 40s, your 80s. Do we feel a need to tweak these age ranges to our own liking because society has already placed them there?

I'm now going to start talking from my perspective, since I can't begin to think that I can speak for everyone on this one. I've always said that my age minimum should be cut off at my brother's age. Anyone younger than my little brother - who's 5.5 years younger than I am - is off-limits. Well, that made sense when he was in grade school. How weird would it be for me to date a 15-year-old at age 18/19? Ew. Or a high school kid after I'd graduated from undergrad? More ew.

But he and I have gotten older...meaning our ages aren't that vastly different anymore. He's reached his 20s. I'm still in my 20s, obviously. Is it still as important to keep that strict age limitation? I feel like the answer might have to be 'yes' given that he's in college and I'm not. Kids younger than him are barely out of high school. That's a little odd. But at the same time, it's not completely unheard of.

And, I've also recently looked at my age-maximum limit. I've kept it at 30 for some time now, simply because that was a round number. But, I'm much closer to 30 now than I was years earlier when I set that limit. 30 isn't old anymore (like it was when I was in college). 30 is livin' it. 35 is happenin'. 30 is no longer a good limit. And I find myself wondering if I should even bother setting a new maximum age limit. Is there really a point? Age doesn't define personality. It defines amount of experience with the world and one's surrounding environment. It gives a general sense of how much maturity a person can be expected to have (although, we all know that's not a set determination, but I won't get into that too much here).

The reasons for having a minimum age limit seem more plentiful than having a maximum age limit, I think. Especially from where I sit. Too young, and they're still in school, or can't come out for a drink. That just seems a bit young. But too old? I'm not sure what "too old" means anymore. I don't think it has a set meaning, because it would depend on the person, really.

I say this all, I think about it all, and it seems as though I'm convinced that I should keep my minimum age limit and nix the maximum one. But, I don't think I can do that, honestly. There are surprisingly mature "young'uns" and surprisingly immature older men. I feel like my age-range of old is melting like a snowman in April. Slowly, steadily, the surrounding environment makes it impossible for me to keep the firm shape of that age range, just as the snowman starts frowning and thinning and thawing - essentially blurring around the edges.

"...and in the end, it doesn't even matter."

Well said, Linkin Park. In the end, whatever happens will happen. Take it in stride, leave the rest alone until it comes. Cross the bridge when you reach it, but no point worrying about it sooner than that. You've still got to travel in the road leading up to it.

Man, I'm into metaphors and similes tonight, aren't I? Huh...

The fifth season has arrived.

2007-01-11T00:14:00.000-05:00

The answer is decidedly no. It's not winter. Not in Boston. How do I know? Nothing on the "winter list" checks out.

Let's see...

Snow on the ground or in the air.
No. Nothing. Not even a thought in the clouds. Rain we get. But never snow.

Freezing temperatures that numb your face when you go outside.
Nope. No face numbing happening here. There are times when I don't even take my coat with me. Or I leave my scarf at home. My hat and mittens rarely make an appearance. What's the point of having all this terrific winter gear if I can never wear it???

See your breath when you're outside.
Only at night. But that doesn't count because you can see your breath at night on Fall and Spring days, too. So no. This one doesn't technically check out either.

Plant life dead and brown and essentially "hibernating" 'til springtime.
Definitely NOT! I see green grass when I walk by parks in the city. There were new buds on a tree on my street this morning when I walked past. I'm taking a camera there tomorrow and shooting a couple pictures if they're still on the tree tomorrow. Someone needs to tell that poor tree that spring isn't coming for another couple of months (or at least, it shouldn't be coming for another couple of months).

Icy sidewalks that take careful poise and balance not to fall on your ass when you walk on them.
'What's ice?' asks Boston's weather patterns. 'Nuff said.

The checklist does go on. I'm just hitting the highlights really. The stuff that I enjoy off of that winter checklist. I want to go outside all bundled up in my winter garb, watch my breath as I walk down icy sidewalks that always threaten to break my leg if I step wrong, and feel my cheeks get numb from the cold only to have that tingly thawing feeling when I go back indoors. I want freezing temperatures. I can't tell you how much I miss the negative degree weather of my youth in Minnesota. I remember fondly the days when it was 30-below with windchill. Or those few days of old when it was so cold out, it was too dangerous to go outside and the governor closed all schools in the state (we're talking 50- or 60-below with windchill). That's winter. That's what I want. I realize it doesn't get quite that cold in Boston due to the ocean effect. But at least give me some single digits here! And snow. There's no snow. I think it has snowed all of twice in Boston this year...once early on in the "so-called winter season" only to melt the next day...and the second time on 12/30 when I flew home from my holiday vacation to be with my family. But again. Didn't even stay. I don't think the ground has frozen...hence the green grass and the freakin' buds on the tree.

What's up with all of this? Worst excuse for a winter EVER!!! I keep threatening to move to Canada if I don't start getting snow soon. I always say it with a joking sort of tone. But perhaps it's becoming less of a full joke and more of a thought in the back of my head that could possibly come true someday. I want snow. The only real snow I've seen all winter was in Montreal when I went in early December. It snowed the entire weekend I was there. It was freezing cold outside. And I loved it beyond all description!!!

I'm boycotting the use of the term "winter" to describe the current state of Boston. It's more like fall/spring. But we're technically between the two, so perhaps I'll coin a new term for the season we're in. Because it's certainly not worthy of the title "winter." I think I will call this season Fring.

Hmm...
Fring. I like it. Silly, ridiculous, nonsensical. Best way to describe this less-than-adequate-attempt-at-winter season.

Turkish Delight...?

2007-01-04T00:36:00.000-05:00

Wow, it's been awhile, hasn't it? I guess the only way to explain is that "I've been busy" - as vague as that phrase is... Life does that "happening" thing, and before you know it, another year has passed, you're another year older (and deeper in debt/St. Peter doncha call me cuz I can't go/I owe my soul to the company store...)

Right. So, I had a topic. Turkish Delight.

What do you think of when you read that? Chronicles of Narnia, right? Perhaps, if you're as into the Chronicles as I am, you may even have gone as far as The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, or perhaps even as detailed as remembering this as the candy that Edmund asks the White Witch for during his first visit to Narnia. I haven't ever run into anyone that's ever actually had any. Most of my life, I thought it was a figment of imagination...a food conjured up for purposes of the story that C.S. Lewis was telling in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. But, it turns out, Turkish Delight is real. It actually does exist, and there's some sitting next to me on the table as I type this.

I came home from the dance tonight (a very fun time at MIT, may I say, but that's a different topic entirely, and we all know I'm working on not digressing quite as much as I normally do...), and my roommate had made a pile of all of the candy and sweets he brought home with him from the holidays spent with family. At the top of the stack was this box of candy labeled "Apricot, Almond & Honey Turkish Delight."

What? Turkish Delight? said I. And I quickly got myself into that box to see what it actually looks like and, more to the point, what it actually tastes like.

And let me say: it's delicious. Quite the perfect thing to use as the enchanted food that the White Witch uses in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe to ensnare Edmund into her little trap. It's a cube of sugary, gooey goodness covered in powdered sugar (or flour? no, most likely powdered sugar...more sugar that way). It's so incredibliy rich and sweet...there's no way I could have eaten more than one!

I love how gushing this post is...all about this candy that until very recently I didn't think truly existed. It doesn't really get to any real point or conclusion. Just a statement of fact. Maybe that's all it really needs, huh?

Turkish Delight: it's real and it tastes fabulous!

[...and now back to our regularly scheduled program...]

What popped into my head at 6:00 pm on a Thursday evening...

2006-12-07T17:56:00.000-05:00

Lilting
Animated
Undulations of
Grand
Humorous
Sounds

Simple
Movement
Implying
Light-hearted
Ecstasy

Honest
Aura
Predominantly
Preoccupied
In
Neatly
Exemplifying
Simple
Serenity

Montreal

2006-12-05T01:26:00.000-05:00

I'm in love with a new city. Okay, that's not precisely true. I should say I'm in love with a new dance scene...because really, I don't actually know the city of Montreal all that well. Just the few blocks I explored during my brief stay.
[But I'm rambling. And though we all know I'm prone to do that, perhaps I should at least attempt to stay on topic for the first part of the post.]

I went to Montreal this past weekend with two good friends of mine from the New England swing scene for a workshop weekend called Montreal Smackdown. And it was such a cool experience! The Montreal dancers are spectacular. The dancers from other parts of Canada are also spectacular. And we had amazing workshops with Skye and Frida. [Alright, if you're not a dancer, you won't understand the connotation of saying "workshops with Skye and Frida." And because this saddens me greatly that you may not understand, you should definitely Google them (please! if only to humor me! stop reading and go type them into Google right now!) and see how spectacular these two Lindy Hoppers are!!]

Okay, enough of the blubbering about the great dancing and great workshops and all that. Put some meat in this post already - you say, rolling your eyes a little (since statistically speaking, you are probably not a dancer, and so alas, you just don't know why all this "blubbering" is happening).

Well, I'm not done with the "great dancing and great workshops and all that." So there. Deal with me. [Hehehe...]

We got workshops that dealt with technique in Lindy and Charleston. We got workshops that gave us ideas on how to improve connection with each partner we dance with on the social dance floor. And we got theory. Lovely, lovely Lindy theory. Sunday was much less dancing and trying out moves that Skye and Frida showed us, and more about their philosophy of dance.

And I must say that the theory part of the weekend made these workshops even more worth it than they already would have been sans Lindy theory - Skye and Frida style. I'm really into theory, it turns out. My life revolves around theory. I tend to see things from two perspectives: theory and application. This may seem a little odd...and a little hard to wrap your brain around, so let me attempt to explain. I am very much a reflective thinker [haha, if you've read the rest of my blog, I'm sure you picked up on that fact already]. And to me, that reflective thinking leads to my own personal theory on life. If you think of that "theory of life" created through my thoughts and everyday musings as an ongoing draft of some overarching document to describe NINA, then you could say that through my daily reflections and random musings, I add things, I cross things out and rewrite them, I acquire knew knowledge to test against existing sub-theories, I update old and worn-out lines of thinking with new strands that I pick up from other people and other experiences. On the other hand, my everyday experiences and adventures (and what-have-you) are the application of my life in the world. They represent the applied side of things. The things I do. The things I have done. Actions, verbs in my life.

But, through all of this thinking and revising of the document stored in my brain, as well as the everyday elements of the applied side of life, I have come to realize that I don't actually understand something until I can connect the theory with the application. And this, alas, is where the explanation can get a little confusing. Let me give you an example. I used to have quite a hard time keeping track of my money (don't we all at this age?) and for the longest time I couldn't figure out why. I thought a lot about what I'd been taught, and what I liked and didn't like about the system I'd been taught. But when it came down to it, I was still living paycheck to paycheck, and really only thinking about the budget I continued to try and set up for myself. Somehow, the connection between theory and reality wasn't happening. It recently dawned on me what it actually means to budget your money and know where it comes from and where it goes. The connection between my theory and application finally got created...meaning that I have a reason to which I can relate for budgeting and keeping track of my money.

And that's the essence of this whole divide. I have trouble doing things for which I don't have a good reason. If I don't know the theory/reason behind something, then I won't fully get a grasp of why it's important or why I have to do it. Thus, I also probably won't do it all that well. So, I try to live for that connection. I will only truly learn something, only truly do something well, if I have a reason - or theory behind why I'm doing it.

This all, I believe, comes from my math major in undergrad. I was a strict math theorist. I wanted theory, theory, and more theory. I wanted to know why. I hated Calculus because I could never get a full answer to all of the "why" questions I asked my teachers. My experience with Calculus often led me, time after time, into situations where my teachers/professors would tell me that they couldn't tell me why because I didn't know enough higher level mathematics. I really think that that's ultimately what drove me to become a math major in the end. I wanted, craved even, those answers to all of my "why"s. [To give you the quick end of the Calculus story, I did end up liking it once I took Real Analysis, which essentially goes back and proves/explains the math involved in the complicated world of Calculus...to a point that allowed me to satisfy all of those "why" questions of old.]

On the other hand, while I loved my math theory, I never got through Physics. It's a sad thing, really. I always wanted to learn Physics, but it never quite made sense to me. The equations used for different physical systems in my Physics classes always seemed so random to me. I never understood why an equation was used for this particular system, or that particular function. It seems so odd that I was a math major but never finished 100 level Physics in college, I suppose. But it hits right at the heart of my "theory vs. application" divide in my brain. My math major was theory. Reasons why. Almost like a history of this equation and that function and this branch of math and that mathematical result. Physics is a pretty direct application of Calculus. It just never linked back to the theory I learned through my math major. I couldn't attach reasons why to all of the equations I was asked to learn and use for the Physics I was learning in class and in lab.

[Right, so remember how I mentioned earlier that I'm prone to rambling...or in this case, going off on tangents? Yeah. Case in point.]

Anywho. So. I have this "theory vs. application" divide in my brain. And I've found over the years that I've been dancing Lindy that I learn movements and steps much better when I have a reason for doing them. A theory to back them up, if you will. [Why yes, indeed I will.]

So, recently, I've really started to develop my own theory of the dance. What does Lindy mean to me? Why do I step here, or move this way, or turn that way? What makes a swing-out work? What makes it feel good (or bad)? And on that vein: what does Charleston mean to me? What are the mechanics involved with that dance and how do they differ from Lindy Hop? How are they similar? What makes a Charleston dance look good (or bad)? And so on...

Thus (whoo! back on topic!), I loved listening to Skye and Frida talk about their theories of the dance. It solidified in my mind the movements we'd learned in the workshops and really sorted out the things they were saying about each movement into a clear reason-based articulation of each step and weight-shift and body placement. And I find myself becoming a better dancer each time I connect more theory with the application of the dance movements I've learned and styled and danced over the years.

[I just realized that I actually didn't get fully back on the topic I originally started writing about. I was trying to talk about how much I love the Montreal dance scene. And I ended up not quite hitting the mark. I was close: talking about Montreal Smackdown and why I liked it so much. But alas, fell short of giving my reasons for loving this scene so much. Apparently I had other things on the brain than simply raving about the spectacular Montreal swing scene. Oh well. Get to know me well enough, and you'll find I'm a master at making this sort of thing happen. Start on one train of thought, end up somewhere else...could be near my original aim, or could be way off on a different target block entirely!

I will say, however, that I truly enjoyed my brief stint in Montreal because everything is in French there! Signs, conversations, food labels, everything! (Duh, you say, it's in Quebec...) It was just so exciting to be once again among French speakers. I was infatuated with France when I went during my senior year of high school, and a lot of that infatuation had to do with the actual language of French existing all around me. So Quebec/Montreal really reminded me of that. And I ate it up! I completely fell in love with the feeling of being in a French-speaking city again.]

Phi!!!

2006-11-25T21:26:00.000-05:00

I found the number phi in Boston Common the other day while wandering the city of Boston on a lovely Friday afternoon and strategically trying to avoiding the Black Friday crowds. [Not quite sure it worked...but that's an entirely different topic.]

I was walking past the Visitors' Center on the Tremont St side of the park, and happened to glance up at the sculptures that border the little circle in front of the Visitors' Center building. I was face-to-face with the one entitled Industry. And what do you suppose the man in the sculpture was working on? A dodecahedron!!! [Not sure what a dodecahedron looks like? Click here for a good picture and description.]

Who would have thought I would find such a fabulous polyhedron just hanging out in a sculpture in the middle of the city of Boston?

I suppose, however, that I should give a brief explanation of phi and it's link to the dodecahedron. I recently finished reading The Golden Ratio: the Story of Phi, the World's Most Astonishing Number, by Mario Livio, so the explanation is quite fresh in my mind. [And it's actually quite a simple relationship, without a lot of bells and whistles. The amazing properties of the number phi make the number infinitely cooler than it may sound here. Look it up, it's fabulous!]

The diagonals of a regular pentagon (all sides of the same length, all angles equal to 108 degrees) cut each other in what Euclid defined as an "extreme and mean ratio" (which later became known as the Golden Ratio or the number phi, equal to 1.61803399...). Thus, you would use phi in the geometric construction of a regular pentagon. The dodecahedron is a twelve-sided object whose twelve faces are all regular pentagons. The number phi is literally bursting out of the dodecahedron from every side!

And I suddenly feel quite a different connection with the Common because of this find. The Common is suddenly connected much more to my world of mathematical images and patterns and structures. I love seeing geometrical structures in architecture as I wander the streets of Boston and Cambridge. I pick out patterns in just about anything that can be formed into a pattern (including random patterns in asphalt, brick, cobblestones, etc.). And I love bumping into shapes and 3D geometrical objects in unexpected places when it's obvious someone explicitly put them there (in other words, not by natural causes - there was a plan for the placement of said shape or object).

I find it fascinating that a familiar place can change so drastically depending on the perspective with which I'm looking at it. Day vs. night, time of year, other people dwelling there, personal circumstances and moods. All of these affect one's view of a place. And it changes its appearance, feel, scent, sound, mood with these different perspectives. But, with all of that, a place can take on a whole new meaning to me with one little discovery. Truly amazing...

P.S. - Some of my favorite properties of this fabulous number phi are:
- [phi]^2=[phi]+1 (phi squared equals phi plus one)
- 1/[phi]=[phi]-1 (one over phi equals phi minus one)
- the Fibonacci numbers are intricately related to phi
- phi is found in the pattern of placement for a rose's petals, a sunflower's seeds, a fern's leaves, and a nautilus's chambers on it's shell
- other places that phi pops up: the pentagon, the pentagram (a regular star: the diagonals of a pentagon), the icosahedron (pretty much the "opposite" geometrical object of the dodecahedron), Penrose tilings, quasi-crystals...the list can go on and on...

Seriously. Look it up. It's a truly remarkable number!

What is Thanksgiving anyway? And why is it such a big deal?

2006-11-19T21:45:00.000-05:00

Why is Thanksgiving such a big deal? I mean, I know the philosophy and the old stories behind why it's supposed to be a big deal. But what has the holiday really become? I guess that's more what my question is.

It just seems to me that the holiday has become massive amounts of food (almost a competition for who can have more at their table and who can eat more of it at the table), and family politics, and huge amounts of food prep time, and sore bellies after the gorge-fest of dinner.

And of course, just like any other holiday in America, I we have to go through all the motions and hubbub and hoopla because it's a holiday and that's what people do. On New Year's we party all night and look for someone to kiss. On Halloween, we dress up and go door-to-door in our neighborhoods hoping to fill a bucket with candy and sweets and things. On St. Patrick's Day, we get roaring drunk on green beer, hopefully at Irish pubs (especially if you're in Boston). On Easter we search for baskets and dye eggs. On Christmas we give presents and sing carols and all that jazz. [I should, of course, make a shout out to holidays associated with other religions, but seeing as I don't know the customs of those holidays, I won't dig myself a hole by trying to inadequately describe "expected behaviors" of those holidays. I speak merely from my own experience, and I apologize for leaving out things I don't know enough about to include in my list.]

My beef, of course, is with Thanksgiving, so I will focus on this holiday in particular. But be sure that I do feel that question should apply to all of the major holidays of the year. (At least, in America, I can't speak for cultures in other countries since I don't belong to those societies.)

Thanksgiving. What are we supposed to do on Thanksgiving? Eat. And eat some more. And eat some more. We must have a huge turkey. And that turkey has to be roasted all day so that the whole house/apartment smells like turkey. We have to have lots and lots of side dishes to go along with this turkey, too. Obviously every family may have their own idiosyncratic additions to the side dish menu, but the required list includes stuffing (i.e. Stove Top, as my family used to say - kinda like "Kleenex" is used as the official term for a tissue with which one blows one's nose), mashed potatoes (in huge heaping mountains), sweet potatoes/yams with brown sugar and marshmallows on top, corn, green beans (perhaps the variation of green bean casserole substituted for plain old stand-alone green beans), gravy made from turkey giblets, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. And we have to all fit at an enormous table set with the good dishes and the nice wine glasses (red and white wine must be served) - well, all except for the children, who are to sit at the smaller kids table (most often a card table) either next to the main table or nearby but in the next room.

And then, we must eat. We are required to take seconds; thirds are optional but highly encouraged after letting the firsts and seconds sit for a bit to digest a little.

Now, you may read this and think I'm batty for having a "beef" with Thanksgiving. After all, who should complain about having wonderful food made for you to eat and eat to your heart's content? Certainly I must be crazy for disliking this holiday.

But you haven't finished reading, or given me a chance to explain what I mean by having a beef with this holiday. I was merely setting the scene so we're all at the same place. Let me continue...

The requirements for this holiday do not stop with the food and the table arrangements and the number of helpings one takes at dinner. With every Thanksgiving, there must be politics. Family politics. If a couple just got married, whose parents to they have Thanksgiving with? If there are children involved and the couple is a bit older, then perhaps the family will come to their house...both sets of parents, and aunts and uncles and nieces and nephews will probably also come along for the ride. But then not everyone likes everyone else. Everyone is polite and friendly at first, of course, because after all - what a lovely dinner was made for all to enjoy. But bellies get full and people get grouchy as their discomfort of having too much food inside their bellies gets the better of them. Old arguments flare up. New arguments begin. Bickering over minor nothings is a rule, and taking sides according to family lines is a given.

People leave feeling heavy and too full to think they'll ever be comfortable again. Family social structure has yet again been ruffled. And lots of dishes lie in the kitchen waiting ever so patiently to be cleaned.

And then, after all that, you have turkey for a million years afterward. Turkey everything - to the point where you don't want to think the word any more, let alone eat another bite of it. You only regain your taste for turkey again after about a year, right in time for the next Thanksgiving, then you start the cycle all over again.

But wait, here's the best (or worst, depending on how you define your terms) part of the whole affair. What if you are missing one or more of those requirements? This is what kills me about this holiday. You feel GUILTY!!!

You feel bad that you aren't flying home to be with your family (if you're single) or you feel bad that you're not visiting either set of parents if you're a couple not able to travel.

...Or you feel sad that you don't know how to cook a turkey and feel inadequate for needing to order one pre-made.

...Or you feel embarrassed that your table is so bare if you can't afford to buy everything "necessary" to make a fabulous Thanksgiving dinner - or that your table doesn't have the exact required elements in the recipe for the "successful" Thanksgiving dinner.

It's the guilt factor that kills me about this holiday. You feel bad about yourself if you aren't stuffing yourself full of food or if you can't afford to travel to see family or if you simply make the choice not to travel for Thanksgiving in favor of traveling for Christmas instead.

[Alright, you caught me. I have quite the personal bias against this holiday. And I could go into the whys and wherefores and stories from Thanksgivings of old, but I feel I'd be getting off-track with my original train of thought. Not that that's never happened before in any of my posts...if you read my blog for long enough, you'll notice that I can have a tendency to run off-track and end on a point (or not a point, for that matter) completely different from where I started in the beginning of the post. But, I digress...]

Here's the thing:

We all know what we're supposed to do on Thanksgiving (and on all of the big holidays, I'm sure). But why? And do we actually know what we're celebrating anymore?

Thanksgiving is supposed to be a time to give thanks for what we have. And I believe that people in general think that they are doing just that. But that's not the main thought on their minds, poor things. They want the food. The goal of Thanksgiving has become the food.

Thanksgiving stories of old talk of pilgrims and Native Americans sharing what they have to create a nice feast that they can eat together in peace. All of my elementary school pictures to color during November are of peaceful meetings between these two groups of people. But that's a lie. They weren't peaceful. A simple lesson in U.S. History will tell you that things were not very much at all like what my old color pages would have my little 5th grade self believe.

Thanksgiving should not include guilt. "Giving thanks for what you have" is not a phrase that one expects guilt to play in to. So what if you don't have as big a table set out as Mr. and Mrs. Joe-Schmoe next door or Mr. and Mrs. Snooty down the street? What's it to them? And why should you feel like less of a person for it? It's not a competition. This holiday is not designed as a status indicator. The point is to give thanks for what you have, not pine over what you don't have.

Perhaps that's where a lot of my beef comes from. When did Thanksgiving stop being content with what you've earned, created, and accomplished and start being about what you wish you could have?

I don't believe that people take the time to sit back and remember what this holiday is supposedly founded upon. Or what they should be truly thankful for. Instead, it's become the Gorge-Fest. And I can't help but wonder why...

*sigh*
Now that I've written this incredibly long and bitter rant about Thanksgiving and all of it's ill-use in today's society, you all think I'm still so completely messed up for thinking this is a bad holiday. You all still think that I've somehow missed the point. And perhaps I have. Perhaps I don't really truly understand this holiday as much as I think I do. I must admit that as a possibility. But, in the interest of ending with a positive spin, since I tend to think smiling is a much better use of one's time than frowning or thinking bad thoughts, I will share with you my list of things for which I am thankful.

I'm having a small Thanksgiving with 2 good friends of mine, here in Boston. I don't go home for Thanksgiving. Our meal will not include anything near enough food with which to gorge ourselves. I (nor they, for that matter) see no point in it.

And I am truly thankful for these 2 friends to share a day with me that would otherwise turn into something lonely simply because I don't attach myself to the customs of this holiday like everyone else. I am thankful for my own family: my mom, my brother, my grandparents, my dad. I'm thankful for the incredible friends I know through swing dancing all over the country, but most especially in New England. I'm thankful for sunny days and blue skies. I'm thankful for the view of Boston over the Longfellow Bridge, and the fact that my walking commute to and from work allows me to see this - my favorite view of Boston - each day. I'm thankful for bad pop music that sounds so good, and for cheesy family movies and ridiculous "chick flicks" and exciting edge-of-your-seat action films. I'm thankful for the beauty of mathematics all around me, and for my ability to understand and truly appreciate the intricacies of that beauty. I'm thankful for old friends who know me better than I know myself. I'm thankful for cold days and fall foliage and serene winter nights. I'm thankful for my new apartment in my lovely new neighborhood, and for my fabulous new job that keeps me in a low-stress and happy-with-work-each-day state of being.

And for a million other little things that don't pop into my mind at this moment...

And for those little helicopter seeds. The ones that you can watch a hundred times in a row with a gleeful grin as they spin out of your hand to the ground below or whirl their way on a gust of wind to find new adventures away from the place on which they originally rested.

How did I get THAT song stuck in my head?

2006-10-19T20:11:00.000-05:00

What makes a song get in your head?

I often wonder this as I walk around with a song stuck in my head [I should note that it's usually broken-record-style in that it's one particular part of a song that plays over and over again. I rarely get through a whole song when it's stuck in my head.]

This week, I've had such a random assortment of songs running through my head at any given time, including (but by no means is this an exhaustive list): Buttons by the Pussycat Dolls, about 5 different Christmas songs, World I Know by Collective Soul, Billie Jean by Michael Jackson, and an assortment of Les Miz songs.

Some of them I know why I have in my head. For example: I went shopping today and one of the stores I was in was playing Buttons and poof! in my head. Fine. Easy to explain.

But why do I have Christmas songs in my head? Like The Most Wonderful Time of the Year, Let It Snow, The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire), and a couple of others. It's so random!!!

And why Les Miz songs? Perhaps this means I need to make a trip to NYC to see the play. I remember getting Phantom of the Opera songs in my head before I went to see it on Broadway last spring with my mom. But then, I knew I was going, so that's probably the reason those songs were in my head. Why I start humming On My Own in the shower or feel the need to put Bring Him Home and One Day More on my "random songs" playlist in iTunes...I can't explain it.

It's so odd to me, and whenever I'm hit with a random tune I'm completely fascinated with the idea of how the song suddenly started playing on the record player in my brain. [Or it could be a CD-player. It turns out I don't actually know what musical playback device my brain employs to play songs through my mind.]

Loosen up my buttons, baby (uh-huh)
But you keep frontin'
Sayin' what you gon' do to me (uh-huh)
But I ain't seen nothin'...

It's the most wonderful time of the year
With the kids jingle-belling
And everyone telling you
Be of good cheer...

I love him, but when the night is over
He is gone, the river's just a river
Without him, the world around me changes
The trees are bare and everywhere the streets are full of strangers...

And so I offer you this simple phrase
To kids from one to ninety-two
Although it's been said many times, many ways
Merry Christmas to you...

Oh man. I believe I've posted in the past about the idea of life having its own soundtrack played by the songs running through your head. I wonder what the assortment of songs in my head this week does for the overall theme of my current life soundtrack (i.e. the one playing as I type). It would definitely be one of the most random albums you could buy if you picked it up off the shelf at a music store one day, that's for sure...

Billie Jean is not my lover
She's just a girl...

Looking into the future of the little girl I once was...

2006-10-15T23:26:00.000-05:00

When I was a young girl I was obsessed with the thought of what I would be like when I was older.
[I'm sure I was not alone. Every girl, every boy I'm sure, every body wonders this at some point in their childhood. It's a natural thing to wonder.]

I'm not talking obsessed as in that's all I thought about day and night. Nor am I saying I tried to be older than I was. I was, am, and always will be proud of my youth and my youthful outlook on life. Perhaps fascinated is a better word.

Because I was. Fascinated. I was fascinated with what I would look like, how I would act, what would change about me, what I didn't want to change about me, what I would do with myself, who my friends would be, what my job would be, where I would live. I used to think about the whole package and wonder with all my little might who and what I would someday become.

I'd look in the mirror and wonder what parts of my face would change as it matured into a woman's face. I knew well enough that I'd always look like "me," but I also knew that certain parts would look older, would mature with time, would take on a more adult-like appearance. I'd examine my features in the mirror and try to imagine them shifted into an older person's face. Sort of like my imagination's version of the computer aging models that police stations use when trying to find a suspect or a long lost child or something.

I'd try to imagine what I'd wear as a woman in the work-world. What would my job be? Would I like it? Of course it'd be a job where I made lots of money, but I truly hoped it would be a job that I loved. (And really, I my little brain pretty much decided at the time that it would have to be a job I loved or I wouldn't dream of taking that job.)

I'd spend hours wondering who my husband would be. I'd try to imagine his face. Try to think of what he would say to me. What would his job be like? What would our children look like? What would our house be like, and where would we live? And let me tell you, I got pretty detailed in my imaginings. It changed day-by-day, year-by-year, but I could have drawn the blueprints of my house. I could have sketched portraits of my husband and children (granted, I'm not a portrait-artist, so they wouldn't have looked nearly as good as they did in my head). I could have written transcripts of imagined conversations we'd have. But I knew that those were all in my imagination. I wanted to know what the real stuff would be like.

As I became more aware of the world full of adults of varying ages, styles, cultures, customs, and stations in life, I began to wonder where I'd eventually fit in to that world.

It's funny - now I'm actually the adult I've always wondered about. I have the yet youthful, but definitely matured adult features in my face (down to a few tiny wrinkles forming under my eyes). I have a job. I have a life of my own. I have my friends. I have my habits and my hobbies. I have become the person I always wanted to know so much about when I was little. And as I was trying to fall asleep tonight, I was struck by this thought. I've reached a checkpoint on the road of my life as defined by the little girl I once was. I'm a young woman, living an adult life, in an adult world, fending for herself and living independently. I'm creating the reality I'd always tried to imagine in my girlish daydreams of old.

I can't help but wonder what that little girl would think if she knew that she'd someday be the woman I am now. Would she be excited to be living my life? Would she like who she saw staring back at her in the mirror? Would she be happy with what I've accomplished at this point in my life? Would she be sad that I'm not married with children on the way? Would she be proud of the person she was destined to become?

I feel certain she would indeed be excited to become the person I am today. I think she'd be proud of the life I've defined for myself thus far. Perhaps she'd lament the fact that there's yet no man of consequence in my life yet, but I believe she'd genuinely look forward to her future self. And I guess my only basis I have for this certainty is simply that when I look back on my life 10-15-20 years ago, I'm happy about the decisions I've made. I'm proud of the way I've handled myself - through tough situations and past mistakes. I do admit that I feel the lack of a man in my life, and that I want so badly to have someone to share my life with. But I'm sincerely happy that that want doesn't dictate how my current life is lived. I'm convinced that, though I'm far from perfect and though I may not have everything I hoped I'd have at this age, I always try to do the best I can with the hand I'm dealt. [And really, let's be honest, the part of me that wondered what my husband and children would be like hasn't left yet. It still is filled with wonder and anticipation about who that man will be and when I will meet him and how I will meet him, etc, etc, etc. And I'm kinda glad that sense of wonder hasn't left me.]

Certainly my little mind from my childhood days would not analyze quite much in depth. She'd see things in a simpler light. But I like to think that she'd smile at knowing she'd one day be me. That she'd think I was pretty, that she'd love that she would someday be a dancer, that she'd get excited about my plans for my career. I like to think that my small little self, wondering about her future, would take comfort in knowing that she'd grow up to be a successful, ambitious, caring, beautiful (inside and outside), and well-liked woman. I think she'd like my Beacon Hill sunsets, too.

[Note: this could potentially read as a way to toot my own horn and talk myself up. If so, then that's the reader's prerogative, of course. But, the way I see it, everyone needs to remind themselves what they like about themselves, and what they need to remember to see about themselves. This is, I guess, my way of reminding me that I feel like I'm on the right track and that I am indeed proud of who I've become. Because, in the end, if I'm not proud of who I am, what's the point in doing anything?]

This song just played as I wrote my last post, and it fits my mood all too perfectly!

2006-10-15T00:23:00.000-05:00

I believe the sun should never set upon an argument
I believe we place our happiness in other people's hands
I believe that junk food tastes so good because it's bad for you
I believe your parents did the best job they knew how to do

I believe that beauty magazines promote low self-esteem
I believe that i am loved when i'm completely by myself alone

I believe in karma: what you give is what you get returned
I believe you can't appreciate real love till you've been burned
I believe the grass is no more greener on the other side
I believe you don't know what you've got until you say goodbye

I believe you can't control or choose your sexuality
I believe that trust is more important then monogamy
I believe your most attractive features are your heart and soul
I believe that family is worth more than money or gold

I believe the struggle for financial freedom is unfair
I believe the only ones who disagree are millionaires

I believe in karma: what you give is what you get returned
I believe you can't appreciate real love till you've been burned
I believe the grass is no more greener on the other side
I believe you don't know what you've got until you say goodbye

(sigh)

I believe forgiveness is the key to your unhappiness
I believe that wedded bliss negates the need to be undressed
I believe that God does not endorse TV evangelists
I believe in love surviving death until eternity

I believe in karma: what you give is what you get returned
I believe you can't appreciate real love till you've been burned
I believe the grass is no more greener on the other side
I believe you don't know what you've got until you say goodbye